Big Tech stocks pare gains as uncertainty looms over Trump tariffs
Big Tech stocks pared gains after a brief spike Thursday morning following a US trade court ruling Wednesday that the vast majority of Trump's global tariffs are illegal.
Apple (AAPL) and Google (GOOG) dipped 0.2% to end Thursday's trading session. Amazon (AMZN), Meta (META), and Microsoft (MSFT) rose less than 0.5%.
Read more about Big Tech stock moves and today's market action.
Stocks lost steam as Wall Street analysts called into question how much the court ruling would actually affect the Trump administration's trade agenda.
Moor Insights & Strategy tech analyst Patrick Moorhead told Yahoo Finance in an email that the Trump administration has "many loopholes to get around this latest ruling." Goldman Sachs analysts called the ruling a "setback" in a note to investors, but said it "might not change the final outcome for most major US trading partners.'
Later in the day Thursday, a federal appeals court allowed Trump's tariffs to temporarily stay in effect.
Trump on April 2 announced a broad array of steep so-called reciprocal tariffs on top US trading partners, a development that shaved over $2 trillion from the Magnificent Seven companies' market capitalizations, cumulatively, in the immediate aftermath. Though the plan was temporarily paused, the US enacted a 10% 'baseline' tariff on all countries and tariffs as high as 145% on Chinese imports.
Later, the government issued an exemption for consumer technology imports such as Apple's products, and a temporary trade truce between the US and China brought down the broader levy on imports from the country, boosting tech stocks.
Then last week, President Trump said Apple must pay at least a 25% tariff unless its iPhones are made in the US, sending its shares plunging. Though Apple has pledged $500 billion to build out its US supply chain, completing that effort could take five years or longer, Yahoo Finance's Dan Howley reported.
Big Tech stocks have suffered from Trump's back-and-forth trade policies. Apple stock is still down nearly 19% in 2025. Google shares are down 8.8% and Amazon has lost 5.5%.
Two of the Magnificent Seven stocks were trading higher than the rest on Thursday: Tesla (TSLA) was up 2% amid news of CEO Elon Musk's exit from the Trump administration. Shares pared their initial gains, up just 0.4% at the market close.
And Nvidia (NVDA) climbed more than 3% after the AI chipmaker reported earnings that showed demand for its AI chips has stayed strong despite a hit from a recent ban on exports of its H20 chips to China.
Laura Bratton is a reporter for Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Bluesky @laurabratton.bsky.social. Email her at laura.bratton@yahooinc.com.
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